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Scope and environment
Customise to your device counts, regulatory frameworks, and deployment constraints.
A comprehensive RFP template for evaluating any privileged access management platform. 80 questions across 9 sections, a scoring guide, a POC validation checklist, and disqualifying-answer flags. Use it freely. Edit it for your environment. Send it to any vendor — including us.
FREE · CC BY 4.0 · NO EMAIL REQUIRED · 80 QUESTIONS · ~3,500 WORDS
Built around the three failure modes we see in real PAM evaluations: vault opacity, hidden cost escalators, and audit-export theatre. Every section ends with disqualifying answers — flags that should stop a vendor from advancing past the questionnaire.
Customise to your device counts, regulatory frameworks, and deployment constraints.
SAML, OIDC, SCIM, MFA, FIDO2, service accounts, degraded-mode behaviour.
Encryption, key custody, BYOK, per-tenant isolation, rotation failure handling, emergency access.
Recording fidelity, integrity, search, latency, paste-event handling, real-time spectating.
Granularity, time-bounded access, JIT approval, vendor/contractor workflows, segregation of duties.
Tamper evidence, retention, SIEM export, pre-built framework playbooks (SOC 2, NERC CIP, IEC 62443, etc.).
Deployment models, SLA, DR posture, implementation timeline, ongoing operational burden.
Network device platforms, server platforms, databases, cloud, ITSM, SIEM, IGA, API/SDK.
List pricing, unit, year-2 escalators, cancellation, data export at termination, support tiers.
Section weights and scoring rubric. Distinguishes "supported" from "supported and audit-grade" — the gap most evaluations miss.
What to actually test in a 5–10 day vendor proof-of-concept. End-to-end onboarding, failure modes, audit export, and pricing-under-load checks.
Seven vendor behaviours that should stop the evaluation entirely. The list every procurement team needs and no vendor will give them.
Most PAM RFP templates are written by analysts (Gartner, Forrester) and sold for $1,500–$5,000. The vendor-published versions are sales documents — designed to spotlight the publishing vendor's strengths and bury its gaps. Neither is what a procurement team actually needs.
This template is honest. It includes questions where Innovexus's own answer is uncomfortable — where we lose ground to CyberArk on feature depth, to StrongDM on developer ergonomics, to ManageEngine on on-prem maturity. We include those questions because they're real, and because we'd rather you choose another vendor knowingly than choose us by mistake.
Appendix B contains Innovexus's own answers to a sample of the most-asked questions. We invite direct comparison. If a competitor refuses to provide answers in the same format, that's signal.
The template is licensed CC BY 4.0. Download it. Edit it. Send it to any vendor you're evaluating, including us. If you find a question we're missing or an angle we've under-served, email [email protected] and we'll improve the next revision.
Run the RFP through three vendors. If Innovexus is on the shortlist, validate with a 5-day technical trial. Pod deploys in minutes, no card required, runs against your real fleet — exactly the POC validation the template recommends.